02-19-2022

The Nutgrass Dispatch

Manoa Community Garden Bulletin - Feb 19, 2022
Aloha Fellow Gardeners! To help keep everyone informed about happenings in the garden, we plan to publish a newsletter every three weeks via email and on the garden bulletin board. The newsletter will be sent out shortly after each inspection. Contributions are welcome, so if you have anything you’d like to share (resources, recipes, stories?), please email us: ManoaCommunityGardens@gmail.com. See you in the garden!

Next Inspection: Tuesday, March 8
Results from the most recent inspection (Feb 15) are attached and will be posted on the bulletin board.

Next Cleanups: Saturday, March 12, 7:30-11:30 am AND Tuesday, March 15, 3:30-6:00 pm
We have two cleanups planned for March, including a weekday afternoon. Remember: this will be the last opportunity to pay your dues in person. Some have asked about receiving work credit for bringing refreshments to cleanups. This is allowed but must be prearranged and is limited to 1 hour of credit per year.

News and Announcements:
Paying Dues
Remember that your annual dues ($30) must be paid by March 31^st, along with an annual application. The application form is attached, or you can get a paper copy at an upcoming cleanup. Please pay by check or money order. When you pay your dues, you’ll receive a copy of the new MCG rule booklet.

Please Report Plumbing Issues
We plan to put in a request soon for the City and County to repair plumbing leaks. We would like to get them all fixed at once. If you have a leaky faucet, pipe, or hose, please report it to us by March 7. Please use this link to report the leak: Report a Plumbing Issue. If the link doesn’t work for you, email us with the location and description of the problem or tell one of the board members.

Misplaced tool
During the Feb 13 cleanup, one of our gardeners misplaced her sickle tool, which may have been left in B41. If you were there and found a sickle, please let us know so we can get it back to her.

Back fence
The chain-link fence at the back of the garden is leaning badly and we have been trying to get it fixed. On Feb 15 several board members met with Cisco (our Community Garden Coordinator) and our neighbors on the other side of the fence to discuss the plans to replace it. Our neighbors plan to build a rock wall as a barrier. If this happens, the wall will serve as a replacement for the chain link fence for most of the boundary. The existing fence may be removed except for the southeast end. The area will need to be cleared of plants, but not until we know when they plan to begin construction (likely May).

Plot markers
Many of the plot numbers (painted in green on a slightly raised brick at the center of a plot border) are difficult to read and need to be repainted. We plan to tackle this at an upcoming cleanup or assign it as an individual project. Please make sure your plot marker is visible and accessible for painting.

Letter from a fellow gardener
Fellow gardener Deanna Yanagisako has asked that we share the attached letter as a follow up to her previous letter regarding payment for weed whacking around the mulch piles and other issues.  

Mahalo Nui:
Mahalo to everyone who attended the last cleanup on Feb 13. A total of 31 gardeners participated and accomplished a lot!  Mahalo to Elena (D90), Pono (B33), Linda O. (A15), Adrienne (B24), Junko (C56), Alex (B46), Craig (A10), Nue (B88), Jackie (D89) and Denny (A19) for helping out immensely around the compost pile. After the cleanup, food was shared by many of the above helpers, plus Sue (A20) and Katy(A8). Thank you also to Aggie (A17) and Tania (B36) for painting beautiful signs for the compost area.

Waitlist Status and Available Plots:
We have 91 people on the waitlist and there are currently no open plots. If you are a current gardener and would like the option of switching to another plot when one becomes available, please email Elena at MCG.waitlist@gmail.com and ask to join the “switch plot” waitlist.

Compost Corner (from Elena, D90):
We harvested our first compost from Bin #1 on Feb 13 and distributed to approximately 20 gardeners who attended the cleanup. Our plan is to harvest compost monthly. We are also working on constructing a cubicle using concrete blocks for storage of large sticks. We have two signs ready to put in the compost area to show where to put sticks and green waste.
At the next cleanup we will be filling bin #1 and opening bin #2 for harvest. Cleanup participants will have first dibs on the compost. Please bring a bucket and the compost team will fill it for you. We are looking for more volunteers to help fill compost bins, aerate them, distribute compost, and keep the area tidy. If anyone is interested in joining, please contact Elena (D90) or Will (B39).

Photo: Adrienne and April (B24) layering green waste in bin #6.

 

Featured Fauna: Bees of MCG (submitted by Will, B39)
There’s a lot of buzz these days about the importance of pollinators, especially bees. Here in Hawaii, bees are important pollinators not only for agricultural crops, but also in native ecosystems. I thought it might bee fun to highlight a few of the bees you’re likely to see at MCG.

You’re all probably very familiar with the honey bee, Apis mellifera. Honey bees are common in our garden and collect pollen and nectar from many different kinds of flowers.  They are not native to Hawaii (or even to North America) but have been introduced around the world for pollination and honey production. They are very important pollinators of many crops, but for some crops they are ineffective. The honey bee is the only colony-forming bee established in Hawaii. The rest of our bee species are solitary; they don’t live in hives, don’t form colonies, and don’t produce honey. Solitary bees are not aggressive and usually build tubular nests in stems, rotten wood, or the ground. They are important pollinators, especially for plants that honey bees do not pollinate well.

One type of bee I’m seeing a lot recently at MCG is the leafcutter bee. Leafcutter bees are related to mason bees (which are important pollinators on the mainland, but do not occur in Hawaii). They’re about the same size as a honeybee, but are usually either grey or dark orange in color. Leafcutter bees build their nests out of (you guessed it) leaves. They cut little oval pieces of leaves and stuff them into cavities to build a nest. The species I’ve been seeing lately is Megachile lanata, a reddish-orange bee that prefers flowers and leaves of plants in the bean family. It is all over my bean flowers right now.

 

Left: A leafcutter bee (Megachile lanata) at MCG. Right: A carpenter bee (Photo by Alejandro Santillana)

Another species that’s an important pollinator in Hawaii is the large carpenter bee, Xylocopa sonorina, which is native to the southwestern US, but was introduced to Hawaii in the 1800s. This is by far the largest bee we have in Hawaii. Female carpenter bees are black and bore holes into dead wood to build their nests. Males are a golden color. These bees are the main pollinator of lilikoi (passion fruit) because they are large enough to contact flower parts that produce and receive pollen. Carpenter bees seem to be rarer nowadays than they used to be. I wonder if we can do something to increase their populations around the garden.

There are several other species of introduced solitary bees in Hawaii, most of them very small, about the size of a cooked grain of rice.  These include sweat bees and tiny carpenter bees. We also have many native species of Hawaiian yellow-faced bees (genus Hylaeus), many of which are rare. Hawaiian yellow-faced bees rely on native plants for nectar, and they are impacted by introduced predators such as ants, so we are unlikely to see them at MCG. They can be seen in some coastal areas of Oahu where native plants are protected.

 

Left: A native yellow-faced bee, Hylaeus anthracinus (Photo by Sheldon Plentovich). Right: A solitary bee house at MCG.

Gardeners often ask if we can set up hives for honey bees in community gardens. Unfortunately, due to health and safety concerns, this isn’t allowed, but you can encourage solitary bees by building bee houses from wood, bamboo, reeds, or cardboard tubes. There are many different designs, and different types of bees will use different sizes of holes. I recently made a few bee houses and set them up in my plot, and I’m waiting to see if anyone sets up shop. If you can, it’s best to mount or hang bee houses such that ants, geckos, and anoles can’t move into them (sticky barriers can be helpful).

You can learn more about bee houses and the bees they attract at this UH page:
Using Bee Houses in Hawaii
And more information on our native yellow-faced bees here:
Hawaii's Native Bees - Nalo Meli Maoli

Letter from Deanna Yanagisako to MCG membership